


for the woman who had everything

by 8TimesTheCharm, hoverbun



Series: the ballad of an empress [3]
Category: Grand Theft Auto Series (Video Games), Persona 3, Persona 4, Persona Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Grand Theft Auto Setting, Blood and Violence, Crime, Gang Violence, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, References to Drugs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-12-06 19:36:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18224531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8TimesTheCharm/pseuds/8TimesTheCharm, https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoverbun/pseuds/hoverbun
Summary: A year after the Black Helmet Murders, with the uprooting of the notorious kingpin King Leo and his associates, Liberty City has been in a state of flux. The Nanjo Group attempts to slip into the vacancy left by the Masked Circle, to paper up the cracks that remained. Power dynamics shifted in a seismic manner along this manmade fault, while on the other side of the country, the ripples of power did not disturb their rival much.But there was a weakness within the behemoth known as the Kirijo family; as staunchly as they established themselves so distinctly to the Nanjo clan that they split from, there was almost a curse of misery that followed their blood since.Mitsuru Kirijo is the heiress to her family fortune. An international powerhouse of business and legacy, she casts a shadow over the city she was born and raised in, and is considered one of the most fiercest Kirijos of the west coast, second only to her family’s patriarch, Kouetsu Kirijo. As Kirijo seeks to take control of other families in the city, Mitsuru finds herself tangled in blood lines as old as hers, and discovers a sinister plot that seeks not only to take her life, but annihilate her family’s legacy.A Grand Theft Auto / Persona AU.





	1. welcome to los santos

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the Persona 3/4 arc of the story! The second arc has begun, following a year after the Persona 1/2 story. Expect a big, dramatic, and just-as-exciting story as the last one!
> 
> The two sub stories following the 1/2 cast that have yet to be written will continue with updates alongside this one - due to their plots remaining tied to the 1/2 stories more than this one, 8TimesTheCharm and I considered it time to start work on the second arc instead of waiting to complete the side stories. I hope everyone stays as excited for the side stories as they are for this one!
> 
> All named characters come from Persona / Shin Megami Tensei games, and belong to Atlus & their writers. Writing tone & characterization is reflective of the GTA setting.

Mitsuru Kirijo purses her lips as she lowers her sunglasses off her face.

Several construction vehicles were strewn across the port’s loading bays, intricately placed to shadow and obscure the scene closer to the water’s open edge. The arrangement was calculated in such a way to bar any would-be interloper from sneaking past hidden suits and watchful eyes. The lines pulled between sail, mast and ship boom on idle boats sitting in the Port of Los Santos chimed with the breeze that rattled them gently. It was a maritime serenity that was utterly amiss with the facts, and if she was anyone else, maybe she’d miss the lack of workmen. Mitsuru adjusts her glasses before the sun’s glare can catch her in the tinted windows of her car, and with a simple turn of the ignition she steps out of her red Carbonizzare, and notes she dislikes how her heels feel against the port’s concrete.

Nobody greets her as she passes between two empty delivery trucks, yet linger with the scent of fish. She scrunches her nose and makes sure to keep her shawl from touching the steel, and mercifully, there is little else to brush herself past to make for the gathered men, and familiar silouhettes against the ocean. Her grandfather’s voice can carry across the waves like any powerful ship, yet the only voice she can hear from such a distance is a terrified one, belonging to a lesser man.

She sighs. Business.

Before she appraoches the scene, she notes two suited individuals approach her at the side, and follow in tandem behind her. The lapel pins in the shape of the Kirijo cranes catch her eye, and in her stride, looks back to nod once. Ahead of her, the grim eye of Takeharu Kirijo looks at her, and he looks back for just a moment at the restrained man being almost scolded by the great Kouetsu before walking towards Mitsuru.

“You didn’t have to come,” Takeharu mutters quietly, taking to his daughter’s side.

“I know,” Mitsuru says, in the same hushed tone, “But I would rather not earn grandfather’s ire.”

“I would have covered for you—” Takeharu cuts himself short to sigh, running a hand through his greying black hair. “He didn’t want to wait for you, anyway. He was… excited. Are you still up for it?”

Mitsuru thinks about lowering her sunglasses again, but ducks her head down and keeps them pressed firm to her face, ignoring the catch of the begrimed chains in the Los Santos afternoon, and the twist of horror on the Fleeca President’s face. “I don’t think so.”

“It’s alright. I will take to it, then.” Takeharu reaches an arm around her back to pat her shoulder once, but it is stiff, and doesn’t feel comforting at all. The horrific cry of Hiroto Tanaka finally breaks Mitsuru’s focus, and she looks towards the restrained man and the silouhette of her grandfather.

“I only wanted to show competition on a surface level! I don’t actually want to break from the Group! It was—It was meant to stimulate investment and inject extra funds into the bank—!!”

“You will not be escaping the hole you have dug for yourself, especially with such a flimsy lie as nonexistent as your means of squirreling out of this mess.” Kouetsu speaks gently but punishes harshly. The way he wags his finger at the suspended Tanaka spoke of a cranky retiree rather than the most powerful man on the west coast. That was always the way, but this was somehow more pronounced in the startling contrast between the power the hunched man radiated versus the physical lack thereof in his body. “You landed Fleeca into this with poor leadership; twisting the links between the bank and our Group to artificially inflate the stocks, to a point where they were almost unsalvageable when the ploy was discovered… rather pathetic, President.”

“Don’t—Don’t do this! Let me go, I’ll make up for it—I’ll move assets around, I’ll balance it out! PLEASE!” Tanaka screams for clemency, begging for his life as his feet were sunk into wet cubes of cement, his arms bound and chained, with the chain wrapped around the end of a crane. In spite of his bonds, he thrashed violently.

"Mercy is something we all know you cannot be privy to now," the elderly Kirijo interrupts harshly, leaning against his walking stick inlaid with a diamond, ensnared by golden filigree. "You have been warned sufficiently time and time again. You do not strike out on your own, independent of Kirijo, in such a manner that rebounds incredibly negatively on the Group. You have made a laughing stock of us in your mutinous attempt, albeit as poorly constructed as it is, not just here but internationally at that. That cannot, and will not, be ignored."

Kouetsu glances at his son. There was a level of honour and kindness that lay within him, a patience that Kouetsu had long forfeit, as evident by the way he lingers by his daughter with a stern stare at the voracity of his father. The great Kirijo patriarch offers a moment of sinister bemusement, before turning away back to the chained President. Mitsuru shifts her posture, folding her arms and moving her weight from one elegant red Perseus pump to another. Young, fiery as the crimson red colour that graced her hair, but so painfully innocent to the true cost of reality in the sun-baked towers of Los Santos—it burns her chest when she watches her grandfather, and the reality burns her further.

"I must admit, it's the first time that any would-be rebel had recruited others to such a foolish endeavour," the patriarch continues, hobbling over towards the restrained businessman in a way that his age doesn't detract once from his immense presence. "So to that end I'll have to concede some degree of acknowledgement, but you must know there are consequences for those you roped into this as well."

Kouetsu looks back at Takeharu. Takeharu nods, and the men not too far to his other side hoist up another mutinous Group member. An older man, not too different from Tanaka’s age, who heaves in exhaustion under the hot Los Santos sun. Kouetsu momentarily turns around to face his flesh and blood, and watches Mitsuru with a careful eye. He glances down, and then sniffs the air. “You do not seem dressed for the occasion, my granddaughter.”

Mitsuru straigthens her back. “I apologize, I was at—”

“No matter. I do not need to hear it.” Kouetsu looks her in the eye once more, piercing through the black sunglasses that he certainly believes she is hiding behind. “Watch your father. He will show you what a Kirijo’s anger brings.”

Tanaka’s panic is wide and guilt-stricken, and he looks over to whisper rapid forgiveness towards his accomplice as the Kirijos converse. “Sojiro—Sojiro, my friend, I’m sorry I got you into this mess.”

The heir to the Kirijo Group too muttered his own apology to the man in his approach, as he raised his heavy foot and kicked down with absolute force. One sickening crunch, then a second. Mitsuru’s eyes squeeze shut behind her glasses, and she prays her grimace is all that her family takes note of. The snap of bone rips through the cry of agony from the older man, and then, the scrape of Takeharu’s boot on the pier.

“Be sure to tell your two boys just why you cannot walk any longer,” Kouetsu states, resting his hands on the walking stick with a commanding thump to the concrete. “If they keep in line, they will be rewarded. If they make a break for it—or worse, attempt a coup!—they will be punished to the utmost severity. I’m sure you’d like to think you’ll have descendants past them, hm?”

The man named Sojiro says nothing, raggedly gasping between his shouts of agony until pain overtook his senses and he passed out completely. Blood swells beneath black dress pants, staining dark. Mitsuru’s head lifts as she stares ahead at Tanaka dangling from the crane as the cement boots solidified, swallowing hard when her stomach lurched into her throat at the second gruesome call of legs being broken, more agonised howling adding to the grotesque chorus. This was her introduction to the responsibilities of a Kirijo, galvanised by the extent of what she might need to resort to when the crane that Tanaka hung from, moved the man to the water, and dropped him in. It is a vicous splash, and splatters the pier.

A minute elapses before the bubbles stopped appearing. With a low chuckle of deep satisfaction, Kouetsu hobbles towards where his car was parked, waited on by a bespectacled man with long hair and a goatee who held the door open. Takeharu looks to Mitsuru, fixing his briefly dishevelled sleeves back down his arms.

“Return to the office as soon as you can,” Takeharu says. He specifies no office, but Mitsuru knows the one. “And—probably lose the shawl.”

Mitsuru’s folded arms bring her semi-transparent floral pattern closer around her. “I will.”

The mournful smile is little more than a formality. Takeharu follows his father, and the man—Shuji Ikutsuki, Kouetsu’s diligent aide—smiles faintly at Mitsuru himself, bowing a departing gesture as he steps inside the black vehicle.

Mitsuru looks over the pier, ignoring the shuffle of Kirijo suits walking across the port to return it to its former state. She breathes in sea water, and feels its potent, cool temperature roll over her, as delicate as a distant rolling tide. It calms her. Opening her eyes, she turns and returns from where she came, to her red vehicle. She imagines the route to the heart of the city, and when she steps inside of her car once more, the twisted fear of Hiroto Tanaka only lingers in her eye as she turns on the radio.

As she enters the crossroads of La Puerta, Weazel News’ fervish report on the burn out of Rise Kujikawa’s career fills her car’s interior.


	2. blaine county detour

The raspy sound of worn-down leather being dragged against coarse sand is punctuated by a wickedly humoured whistling, curling up into the hot sun cooking the asphalt of Blaine County’s isolated roads. The heat is unforgiving, yet it’s perhaps a mercy that the cooler months have begun to calm the violent desert threatening to wash over the entire county. But with that heat, a rich, putrid stench of fresh rot permeates the air - a corpse is pulled to its assigned place in the small caravan gathering of ‘Stab City’, some half hour driving from Sandy Shores, bodies astray with the thick of blood and soiled corpses. The burly fellow dragging them pays no heed to the scalding, unforgiving sun beating down on his skin, happily wearing a faded, tatty tank top matched with sweatpants that have seen much better days. Arranging the body to his liking, the haggard man nods to himself and claps his hands together. Not a finger out of place. And he knows he’s not dreaming, because that stench would wake him up.

“Naoki! Hey! Get over here; need your eyes on this scene.”

His accomplice, a tiny, wiry bundle of anxiety and paranoia, yelps and scampers over to him. He grimaces the closer he gets, and Naoki Konishi ducks his head long enough until he can bring his head up to his boss. “Wh-what do you need me for?”

Naoki receives a hard slap on the back that is intended to be friendly, but makes him leap forward with a meek noise, stumbling his ratted boots into the sand. His friend gestures to the macabre scene of multiple dead bikers of the Lost chapter strewn about, weapons tossed next to open hands like an afterthought. Naoki bites his tongue like he’s going to be sick, and his friend yanks him back up, grabbing the back of his flannel shirt before he drops himself right on top of a body. “I mean, does that look vaguely convincing to you?”

“S-Sorry, I wasn’t paying much attention to the setup—I got the radio on, and news just broke about Fleeca’s boss going missing—”

“You’re standin’ on his wrist, bucko.”

“—and then turning up dead in Los Santos’ docks, and that’s big! Kirijo dirty laundry and that kinda thing, imagine if that-!”

A heavy, strong arm wound around his shoulders with a little more weight and tightness around Naoki’s neck than what would pass for friendly. The humour and lack of grace pinched like dust in the heavy air, and Naoki’s squeak sounds like the crush of tin cans under your heavy boot. For all of the nods of friendship, this ‘friend’ could barely tolerate, but Naoki—to his sister Saki’s chagrin—would never and could never hope to rally enough of a spine to challenge him. Master to servant, a strongarm bully.

Not intentional, of course. Sometimes your fists get bruised. It’s like that. “Naoki, just look at the dead bastards n’ tell me if it’s convincing.”

“Yeah… yeah, Kanji that looks—that looks legit to me.”

“Great!” the broader, taller man exclaims in delight, releasing Naoki with almost the same force he dragged him close with, a sing-song delight before he begins the whistling tune once more. “Throw them munitions on the back of the trailer, and I’ll drop you back to your sister’s bar. Then, I’m getting us some drinks!”

“I don’t think she’ll let you drink for free like you thought you could last time…” Naoki mutters, more so to himself, but even though Kanji hears, there’s no repercussion. With feeble arms, he drags a crate of Ammunation’s clearance stock to the battered red pickup truck sitting idle outside of Stab City, population fifteen, which is loaded on by Kanji’s strength and before long, the truck rumbles to life. Kanji’s got his foot teetering on the pedal before Naoki even pulls himself in the pickup, swinging himself in and crashing into well-worn cotton fabric as the truck kicks up the dust.

“They’re going to find that pretty quick,” Naoki remarks, arm over the back seat, watching the dust cast over the corpses.

“Y’know they’re just going to call it a happy-accident,” Kanji quips, a wry grin on chapped lips. He has his own arm hanging out of the windowless door, and he knocks the radio on with the edge of a knuckle, a viciously rebellious tune roaring from the scratched radio, like the wailing voice of two generation’s past punk was proclaiming his independence through a mesh strainer. That kind of shit. “If we were closer to the middle of the county? Maybe they’d give a shit. But let ‘em pick through their shit-shorts and consider it a leadership struggle. Sound good?”

“If that’s what you say,” Naoki says, sitting back in his seat.

“It ain’t what I say, it’s what I know! This is why I set the scenes, and you… listen to the radio.”

“It’s serious shit, Kanji!” With a twist, Naoki faces him in his seat, as the large tires of Kanji’s truck roll over something left in the road. Not his problem. “It’s obviously meant to be a message sent to Fleeca for their president’s behaviour. You’ve been talking about the city—”

“For Tatsumi Enterprises interests, far away from Kirijo’s territory,” Kanji interrupts, rolling his eyes.

“—But think about what that tells other business. Get outta Kirijo’s way, or suffer consequences!”

“Wasn’t the president shitting their money out to pay for, what, three different mistresses?”

“And our practises are any more legitimate?”

Kanji glares at Naoki’s raised eyebrow. He cuts a sharp turn into the dust of the Shores, and makes Naoki knock back into the car door.

“Ow! Watch it!”

“Think about that bruise next time you compare our humble business to paying off hookers,” Kanji grunts, and kicks his foot against the break, veering the truck into a barely-open space at the front of the Yellow Jack Inn. Naoki rubs his arm with his whimper muted, shuffling after the prideful gait Kanji paces with through the sheltered door into the bar. Saki looks up from behind the counter with a stony expression and eyes that narrow sharply recognising her brother’s tormentor — and perpetual companion.

“Tatsumi, again?”

“Sakiiii, hey! Good to see you,” Kanji beams, swaggering to the bar stool and taking his sweet time to sit on it. The bartender bristles, the cloth in her hand swivelling around the interior of a beer glass squeaking thinly under the generic thrash metal on the radio, but her brother’s presence silences her to listen a little longer. “I’m buyin’ drinks for us.”

“And your tab from last week?”

Kanji handwaves it “Get us some Pißwasser, I’ll fix up when we hit paydirt.”

“Dickhead,” Saki astutely deadpans back, rooting around for some beer. She spares a glance towards her brother, letting the usual bout of inward despair at his future tied inexplicably with Kanji Tatsumi, before setting the freshly opened beer bottles out on the counter towards the dynamic duo. “Well, drink up and hurry on out; the longer you sit around, the more likely I’m going to go broke.”

With an overt gulp, Kanji takes almost two thirds of the bottle down his neck, and another finishes it off. The glass rattles when he slams it back onto the counter, looking at Saki as if he expects a prize for finishing before Naoki. All he receives is another withering roll of her eyes, while Naoki’s brief bout of choking on his own attempt earns the younger Konishi a weary sigh from his sister.

“It’d help if you had any idea for leads,” Kanji says, tilting his head to the side to emphasise that this would be a team effort in keeping the Yellow Jack Inn afloat. “Can’t always be doing the heavy lifting around here.”

“Maybe if you didn’t touch the shit you sell, you might be on top of things,” Saki growls, responding to that by taking the empty bottle and firmly pressing the base of it into Kanji’s forehead, pushing him back slightly “You got a good brain, if you didn’t keep drowning it in whatever Vagos crap you steal.”

Naoki recovers from his coughing fit long enough to look genuinely afraid for the continued existence of the Konishi family in San Andreas with Saki’s actions. Kanji, however, is unfazed—he just registers this as playful banter altogether, grinning like the conditional part of the elder sibling’s praise of his intellect didn’t exist.

“Christ,” she utters, shaking her curly blonde-dyed tresses to and fro “Look. It’s not like you to be desperate for leads.”

“There’s no more Lost in the state,” Naoki helpfully interjects.

“No wonder,” Saki rubs her face once, fingers pinching the bridge of her nose “So that’s why you’re complaining of having nothing to do. I guess—”

“Hey, think of it this way, I appreciate your wisdom, so I’m lookin’ for your input.”

The bar mistress struggles to grapple with the rare instance of a compliment being thrown her way, as it came from a man whose voice she regards as little better than the irritating sound of cicadas mating outside of her trailer window. It takes some inward dialogue to move herself towards helping Kanji, and it's painfully obvious. Sometimes, you'd have to wonder if he's even aware of how others see him, or if Kanji's just as bullheaded as city-made testosterone.

“I suppose… if you want something legit for a change, you can see if the folks at the Vineyard want any help.”

“Do I look like a grape picker?” Kanji groans, leaning back and rolling his eyes with an aggressive snort. “Come onnnnn.”

Saki's lip is sealed shut, and brandishes the towel as if it were a weapon. “It’s the only fucking suggestion you’re getting out of me. You can get on outta here n’ scram, otherwise - only job you’ll get here is scapegoat for shit happening in my bar, and I don’t think you wanna see the sheriff again any time soon.”

“Saw the fat fuck yesterday. Nooo thanks to an encore.” Kanji mutters, standing up. “Naoki, stay put. I’ll scout out this here opportunity.”

"I got you," Naoki sighs, slouching into the aged and stained wood of the bar. His wave goes unnoticed by the extortion racket that is his best friend, as Kanji leaves the stool and through the old glass door of the bar with the grace of a sack of wet mice.

Saki folds her arms, cutting her brother a pointed look. "You're paying again, I take it?"

"Guess so, sis."


End file.
